You heard it from Fannie Mae -- home prices are going to drop another four to five percent in 2008, and a turnaround won't happen until 2009.

If you're a seller: boo hoo. If you're an investor: yahoo!

Investors look to buy homes in down markets, improve them and sell them at a profit. And the best time to buy is when a market is soft, but looks like it's about to turn around.

How do you know a market's turning around? Jobs. A metro starts adding jobs.

Take Texas, for instance. According to the Real Estate Center at Texas A & M, Texas is generating more jobs than the U.S. average (2 percent to 1.2 percent), has lower unemployment than the U.S. average (4.1 to 4.7%), and all metros are reporting positive employment growth rates.

Yet housing prices are $1,200 lower in October than they were in September in Dallas and a whopping $8,900 lower in Austin for the same period. (Editor's note: November home sales not yet available.)

How can you have more jobs and lower housing prices?

It's called "opportunity."

That's why Franchisor HomeVestors named four out of its top ten markets for investing are in Texas.

1. Houston, Texas
2. Atlanta, Georgia
3. Dallas, Texas
4. St. Louis, Missouri
5. Phoenix, Arizona
6. Fort Worth, Texas
7. San Antonio, Texas
8. Minneapolis, Minnesota
9. Chicago, Illinois
10. Milwaukee, Wisconsin

You know HomeVestors. They buy ugly houses. And they train investors to do the counterintuitive -- buy when no one else is buying.

Says John Hayes, president and CEO of HomeVestors, "It was an ugly year for residential real estate ... . Despite changes in the market, real estate investing continues to grow."

So just scoot your boots down to the Lone Star state, and soon you'll be singing, "All my 'nvestments are in Texas... ."

Published: December 24, 2007

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